


reflections in wisps

by byeolbit



Series: small towns, faded dreams [2]
Category: VIXX, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Angst, M/M, Sad Ending, told from Seokjin's pov, tw for smoking and language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25286701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byeolbit/pseuds/byeolbit
Summary: Seokjin knows he won’t have Jaehwan for long. The illusion of their love is a false reflection in the fading wisps of feelings they once harboured for each other.
Relationships: Kim Seokjin | Jin/Lee Jaehwan | Ken
Series: small towns, faded dreams [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1605397
Comments: 12
Kudos: 6





	reflections in wisps

**Author's Note:**

> [Inspiration playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/31ilLvpqcBjR8MSuPlhlZK?si=XHQNPSaAQQibMNogocAmbQ)

_“You’re smoking again”_

_“I was wondering when you would notice it and ask me to stop”_

_“I don’t think asking would have actually made you stop.”_

_“I guess not”_

-

When Jaehwan returns, he apologises to Seokjin.

Jaehwan apologises but makes no excuses. It’s part of what Seokjin likes about Jaehwan. He has no lies or cover ups or excuses. He comes down to the fancy apartment they share in the ‘right side’ of town after disappearing for days and tells him he is sorry.

He doesn’t tell Seokjin what he is sorry for and Seokjin doesn’t ask because there are things he should be sorry for and he doesn’t tell Jaehwan about them either.

Instead they kiss. It’s easier to be lost in the way Jaehwan’s lips on his skin give him goosebumps and how the warmth of someone else feels just right when he has been deprived for so long. Sex doesn’t require thinking. Sex doesn’t even require feelings if you are doing it right.

And so he kisses Jaehwan back and let’s the thoughts in his head be drowned out behind white noise.

-

Seokjin grows up in a house in the posh suburbs to the east of the city. He grows up in a small two storeyed house with a flower bed in the front yard and a white picket fence all around. He even had a sugar glider briefly but he forgets the name.

His life changes drastically when his father decides to run for the local government body. Suddenly his family is thrust into the limelight and his father’s PR team decides to use the opportunity to broadcast how virtuous and well behaved they are.

His mother and brother fare better under the scrutiny. His mother is traditional and believes in supporting her husband and hence has no problem playing the part of the loving partner. His brother is ambitious. He studies business in a prestigious business school and starts his own business, riding on his father’s fame. He humbly attributes his success to the values his parents instilled in him at any public event and even marries the daughter of their father’s biggest sponsor for campaigns.

Seokjin does what any sensible young adult would when faced with life changing events out of their control.

Seokjin _rebels_.

He goes to the local art college to study filmmaking. Despite his gorgeous face, he becomes an assistant director with a non-profit organization that works to raise awareness about issues plaguing modern society through films. And as the last nail in the proverbial coffin of his good boy image, he starts to date Lee Jaehwan. A good for nothing who brings no addition to their family’s social status, his grandmother announces over a family dinner and Seokjin kisses Jaehwan in front of everyone to “console him”.

-

“Try not to give someone an aneurysm” Hoseok pleads, adjusting Seokjin’s wonky bow tie.

“I make no promises,” Seokjin says with a devilish smile.

“Okay. I’ll treat you to coffee for a month if you can wait till after the auction has concluded before offending someone with a witty remark” Hoseok says.

“Of course I am not gay, I am merely waiting for the right girl to make an honest man out of me. Of course my parents are doing well, I called them just the other day. Yes my brother’s business is doing great, I am very proud. If only I was more like him” Seokjin says in a shrill voice and Hoseok gives up on any hopes he has.

Seokjin follows his friend who navigates through the crowd and talks to the crowd attending the art exhibition he has curated. It has the most ostentatious, the creme de la creme of society in attendance and Hoseok has high hopes to earn the profits he needs to keep the museum running tonight. And Seokjin is many things but not a bad friend so he sticks to the flutes of champagne supplied helpfully by the servers and makes a polite comment here and there but says nothing more.

“Isn’t she a beauty?” Hoseok asks, when he finds Seokjin looking at one of the modern art pieces on display. It’s a realist painting of a diner in a small town. The diner has large glass panels that lets the onlooker see inside and note the people sitting down by it and a waiter serving them from behind the counter.

“What’s the story behind this?” Seokjin asks. The diner is dreary to look at and inspires no strong emotions but that is how real life is. Nothing interesting ever happens and Seokjin can hardly blame the artist for depicting the truth of the world. It’s also surprisingly devoid of people and meaningful interaction, like it is an image of a lonely time, sliced out of the flow of time and captured on canvas. It’s how most of his nights look now but Seokjin quickly squashes the depressing reminder.

“Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. A classic modern art piece” Hoseok tells him. “It’s supposed to be a comment about loneliness in the urban lifestyle of the 1940s America.”

“Still holds,” Seokjin says, taking a sip of his champagne. His cheeks burn with warmth but he ignores it.

“Is it already bid for?”

“Not very high if you’re thinking about buying it. Everyone is going for the more well known modern art pieces or the fancier classics” Hoseok says. Seokjin takes a cheque book out of his jacket. He didn’t intend on using it tonight but life has never gone the way he intended it at any time.

-

“What do you think?” Seokjin asks once the crew from the museum installs the painting in the living room and leaves.

Jaehwan looks at the painting and says nothing. Seokjin knows he hates it. But it is magnanimous of him not to voice it immediately. The painting has grown on Seokjin and he can’t bring himself to regret the small fortune he has spent on it.

“I like it” Seokjin responds when Jaehwan doesn’t. He reaches out and adjusts the painting so that it is perfectly parallel to the edges of the wall.

“Why this specific painting?” Jaehwan asks.

“I liked the irony of a social place being used to depict loneliness. It spoke to me spiritually” Seokjin says. He goes on to add the analysis of the painting that Hoseok gave him about loneliness and despair and how the want of company and comfort is a thing that hasn't changed over decades and continents.

"You could add a funky neon sign with a few letters blinking or not lit up and it would be any themed diner here in South Korea" Seokjin jokes before admiring the way the painting looks on the light cream coloured walls of the apartment.

Jaehwan stares at the painting and never looks at it again for the remainder of the night.

-

Things almost go back to normal but they really don’t.

Jaehwan takes Seokjin on pretty dates to pretty places during the day and whispers dirty things into his ear as he kisses him at night. It’s almost like the days he disappeared and the fights they had didn’t exist.

But he also dazes out in the middle and never really pays attention to whatever Seokjin is talking about. He hums and responds at all the right places in a conversation but never really means any of it. Jaehwan also takes to his old habit of smoking in the balcony after every night they spend together. It’s like whatever happened in those days has changed everything between them.

Seokjin knows that the ground beneath his feet has shifted. He’s no stranger to that feeling of the world changing overnight. Only this time, it happens so quietly that Seokjin really doesn’t know how to deal with it.

How do you hold onto smoke that lies within your reach but cannot be held? It only shifts out of his grasp, just far enough to never truly be held and just near enough to suffocate him slowly.

-

“I have news for you” Jaehwan says, looking at Seokjin. “Taehyung liked the manuscript I sent in. He’s suggested minor changes and decided to forward it to Namjoon. If Namjoon likes it, I will get a publishing deal.”

“That’s amazing,” Seokjin says and finds that he really means it. “I didn’t even know you were planning on sending it in.”

Jaehwan and Taehyung have an awkward history. Taehyung is a book critic and editor for Namjoon’s publishing house and someone very familiar with Jaehwan’s writing from his newspaper columnist days. Taehyung always claims to have fallen in love with Jaehwan’s writing way back then. But Seokjin knows that Jaehwan wants nothing to do with his old life and so he usually diverts Taehyung's attention away from it.

“It’s nerve wrecking as fuck. I hope this becomes popular as hell so I never have to write ever again” Jaehwan swears. Seokjin laughs.

“Let’s open up a new wine bottle. Yoongi recommended this new brand of red wine that I got a bottle of and you can tell me what your new book is about” Seokjin says. It’s a little too early to celebrate anything but a little cheer will be good for them.

“It’s just a story about… people. Places and things. Nothing and everything” Jaehwan says vaguely as he gestures to the air around him.

“What a thrilling description. I’ll ask Namjoon to put it on the book cover” Seokjin says wryly. For the first time in a very long time, Jaehwan laughs and Seokjin laughs with him.

-

What Seokjin does ask of Namjoon is a copy of the finalized manuscript that is approved for printing.

Namjoon loves the book and gives it a raving review. The publishing deal is finalized quickly because Taehyung does not want to give Jaehwan the chance to change his mind. Before Seokjin knows it, a thick bundle of papers tied together with a large gaudy paper clip and sealed in tacky brown packaging arrives at his doorstep.

Seokjin keeps the manuscript a secret. He wants to let Jaehwan offer a signed personal copy for keepsake. But he is also a curious soul and this trait always gets the best of him.

Jaehwan is out for the night. (He is always out for some reason or the other.) So Seokjin pours himself a glass of cheap store bought red wine and puts the manuscript on his lap and begins to read.

It's a story of a lost man. A man who feels lost even though he is loved by all and a man who doesn't know himself though everyone around him is quick to label their relationship with him and by extension to label him. The protagonist spends half the novel wandering and pitying himself till he meets someone and falls in love. It's a forbidden sort of love and sucks both men in till their feelings overwhelm them. The protagonist leaves by the end because the protagonist always does but he leaves his heart in the tiny dingy motel they met in and even that admission is a guilty confession to the wide vacuum of an uncaring world and not to the object of his affection.

Seokjin reads through the manuscript in one setting. Jaehwan is just that good with his words and Seokjin knows this is a rare glimpse into his mind that no one else is afforded just yet. Jaehwan will make it big. No wonder Taehyung is anxious to have the deal under his publishing house. Jaehwan writes about true love and heartbreak in a magnificent way that anyone can understand but can only hope to experience in their lifetime. At once the grandeur of heartbreak is within your grasp and just out of your reach.

When he finishes the manuscript, he looks at the painting hanging in the gallery and understands Jaehwan's surprise. He rereads the last confession and understands Jaehwan's disdain too.

-

"I don't have excuses" Jaehwan says, when Seokjin finds him smoking on their bedroom's balcony.

"You never do" Seokjin says, sitting down next to him.

"I'm a shit liar for a writer" Jaehwan admits. Seokjin scoffs and rubs his nose. He is resigned to the situation but he doesn't find the smell pleasant. Nothing will endear him to smoking, he thinks. Not even the oncoming heartbreak.

"You're much better than you think you are" Seokjin says. Jaehwan gives him a searching look. How much does Seokjin already know, Jaehwan wonders. The painting from the living room is gone and Jaehwan has seen the copy of his book on Seokjin's nightstand.

"How much did you read?" he ventures to ask. Some band-aids are better ripped off as soon as the wound stops bleeding.

"All of it" Seokjin replies honestly.

"I didn't mean to break your heart" Jaehwan tells him.

"You don't get to decide what hurts me and what doesn't" Seokjin says sharply. He doesn't like the way Jaehwan genuinely sounds apologetic and guilty. He hates how it isn't motivated by love and merely by concern over a relationship that should have died much earlier.

"Why did you come back if you thought you really loved the one you left behind?" Seokjin asks.

"Because that ending is… a white lie. A romantic ending to make the book sellable. I didn't fall in love when I was at the motel. I didn't fall in love with someone else" Jaehwan explains.

"You only fell out of love with me" Seokjin summarizes breezily. Jaehwan draws a deep breath of his cigarette and turns away to let the smoke out. This hurts more than Seokjin thought it would.

The two men sit in the balcony and avoid looking at each other. The air between them is thick with tension, stuffy from the remains of what once was and will never be again.

Seokjin watches the tendrils of smoke rise from the last of Jaehwan's cigarette through its reflection in the window glass. The ember glows till it dims and fades out, leaving only smoke in its wake.

He wonders if the disappearance of the carbon means he can pretend that the smoke never existed once sufficient time has passed. Or if the smell will taint his memories forever like heartbreak threatens to taint the rose hued past blue. He wonders if he can lean forward and catch the smoke as it twists in and out of the air current to rise up and disappear into nothingness. He wonders if the smoke was always meant to escape and if the paper was always meant to burn to give it the freedom it so runs after.

In the end, all the smoke does is suffocate him and make his eyes water.

-

**Author's Note:**

> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/starryfics1?s=09) | [Tumblr](https://vixxscifiwritings.tumblr.com) | [CuriousCat](https://curiouscat.me/poojamk15)


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